In the manufacturing industries, it is well known to assemble motor vehicles and other articles of manufacture by assembling a number of components to a body by a fastener such as bolts, screws, and rivets. In the manufacturing environment, such assembly operations are conducted in a way that is economically efficient in order to reduce cycle time and assembly labor cost and also ergonomically efficient in order to provide good working conditions for the assembly operators.
A typical assembly operation is conducted by an assembly operator who carries a component to the vehicle and holds the component at its desired location while the fasteners are installed. The assembly operation must be designed to account for the weight of the component, the presence of obstacles such as adjacent structures that might obstruct the path of component entry to the body, and the need to support the weight of the component while the fasteners are installed. An example of such an assembly operation is the loading and attachment of a brake booster assembly to a vehicle body bulkhead. The typical brake booster weighs several pounds and must be carefully routed by the assembly operator in order to clear adjoining structures such as the sheet metal shock tower of the vehicle body.